by Jodi Taylor
At that moment, I heard Jones stumping back down the stairs again. The door opened and he stood there. He saw me holding the picture and I imagine my face must have given everything away.
We faced each other across the room. I could feel the ache in my head and arm, although whether that had been caused by me hitting the ground or Jones hitting me I couldn’t, at that moment, have said.
We stared for what seemed like for ever. I waited for him to say, ‘What’s the matter?’ or ‘I told you to sit down, Cage. Don’t you ever do as you’re told?’ but he didn’t and now the silence had gone on too long and I knew and he knew I knew.
He said heavily, ‘Nothing gets past you, does it?’
I said nothing, but I took a step closer to the front door. Just in case. I held my breath, waiting for him to explode with violence again.
He made no move. ‘I can explain. If you’ll allow me.’
I found a voice. ‘Stay back.’
‘What do you think I’m going to do to you?’
‘Nothing. You’re never going to do anything to me again.’
‘Again? What’s this all about?’
I held up the picture. ‘This.’
He sighed and his shoulders sagged.
‘Yes, sorry about that. We tried to get a replacement but the shops were shut over the holidays.’
‘We?’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you talking about?’
I flourished the picture again. ‘I told you. This.’
‘Yes, I can see that, but I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing here.’
‘I’m talking about how this got broken.’
‘So am I – although Sorensen will have my guts for telling you.’
My world was whirling about me, not dissimilar to the way it had swooped and plunged in Sorensen’s clinic. Angry snow danced before my eyes. ‘Tell me.’
He sighed.
I shouted, ‘Tell me,’ and something in my head flashed pain. I stamped it down. I’d had my warning. I would never do that again.
‘I work for Sorensen.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘No, I’m working for him now.’
I stared. Again my head thumped. The thought flashed through my mind. Get out of here. Get away while you still can.
He said quietly, ‘You know I told you they wouldn’t give me my full security clearance back. Because of the Clare thing.’
I nodded.
He sighed, looked away from me for a moment and then said, ‘He made me an offer. Full reinstatement if I got you out of the way so they could search this place from top to bottom. And install some equipment.’
I wasn’t sure I was taking it all in.
‘I had to get you out of your house for a couple of days, so … so I invited you for Christmas. We left by the front door – they came in through the back.
Unfortunately, someone was clumsy. The picture was broken. The shops were shut for the holidays so they repaired it as best they could and everyone hoped you wouldn’t notice. It would probably have been replaced tomorrow or the day after.’
‘By whom?’
There was a long pause. ‘By me.’
The silence went on and on. My head thumped again. A warning. Because I was angry and I was struggling. This was my fault. All the warnings had been there and I’d either ignored them or missed them completely. How many times had he said, ‘Sweetheart, we are the authorities.’ Not, ‘Sweetheart, they are the authorities,’ but we. Always we.
And worse – had he been working for Sorensen all the time? He said he’d stolen Sorensen’s car to get me out of the clinic, but who steals their boss’s car? I’d been deceived and lied to. And it wasn’t even as if it was for the first time. I’d fallen into Sorensen’s trap with Ted and then again into exactly the same trap with Jones. Sorensen had called me a stupid woman and I was. I was the most stupid woman in the world. To be caught twice with the same trick. Self-loathing and disgust and humiliation boiled around inside me. My head thumped again.
And then I suddenly thought – had I always known? Subconsciously, had I known what he was doing? Was that why I dreamed he had turned on me? Had my own mind being trying to tell me something?
‘Well,’ I said, and even my voice wasn’t my own. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me you didn’t have a choice. That’s what men usually say when they’re caught doing something despicable they could perfectly easily have said “no” to, but they’re too gutless to take that option.’
He said nothing.
‘What happened to – you’re Ted’s wife, I’d never let anything happen to you?’
He said nothing.
‘Or – you can trust me?’
Nothing.
His colour had shifted away from me. The golden colour had gone. His face expressionless and detached. For some reason, this made me even more furious.
I said quietly, ‘You really are doomed to betray the women you love, aren’t you?’
He gave a sharp intake of breath. For one moment, his colour flared around him and then he said, ‘Look, we really should sit down and discuss this.’
There was something false there. I could see it in his colour. His eyes shifted to the light fitting and then back to me again. And then he did it again and I suddenly remembered what he’d said about installing equipment. Were we being overheard? Or watched? I had a sudden vision of my every move being scrutinised by a team of Sorensen’s people. A cauldron of rage erupted inside my head. This was my house. My own little house. My home. I swear, if, at that moment, I actually did possess the power to bring Sorensen’s world down around his ears, then I would have done so.
I cut my eyes back to Jones who was staring at me. He said, ‘Let me get your suitcase. There’s something in it which will explain everything.’
Without waiting for a reply, he ran back upstairs again, returning a moment later with my suitcase. He crossed the room and placed it by the front door, then returned to his original position across the room. His colour flared towards me. And then away again.
For a moment, I couldn’t think what he was doing and then I got it. He was giving me an escape route.
I was going to cry. I couldn’t look at him. My hopes, my dreams, my future, even my past. Everything was crashing down around me. It was the end of everything.
He said very quietly, ‘Take Ted with you,’ and I realised I was still holding the photograph. Then, more loudly, ‘No, no, Elizabeth. Don’t go.’
I whirled around, snatched up my suitcase, wrenched open the door and ran down the steps. Out and away.
I’d like to say I walked away, because walking away sounds so much better than running away, but I can’t. I ran. I ran from everything that had anchored me in this world. My life. My house, Michael Jones. Suitcase in one hand, Ted in the other, I ran.
I had no idea where I could go or how I was to escape this web in which Sorensen had entangled me, but that’s the great advantage of losing everything. There’s nothing left to lose.
Acknowledgements
Thanks, as always, to everyone at Accent Press for their help, encouragement and chocolate.
Thanks to everyone at Octavos’ Bookshop for their hospitality and their apparent willingness to put up with me at a moment’s notice. Thanks especially to Matt for his exceptional American Pancakes with bacon and maple syrup. I feel another Homer Simpson moment coming on.
Thanks to my editor, Rebecca Lloyd, for her unfailing patience and who is, apparently, a bottomless pit of knowledge. Actually, having read that it occurs to me that’s not the most flattering thing to say, but she really is.
Thanks to Jan and Mike for their hospitality.
Thanks to Hazel for her hospitality and the eventual provision of Chinese Food. Conversations go like this:
‘What do you fancy to eat?’
‘I could really murder a Chinese.’
‘Jamaican it is then.’
And finally, a massive thanks t
o my lovely readers, who have taken everything I’ve thrown at them over the past four years and come back for more. Guys, I salute you!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JODI TAYLOR was born in Bristol and educated in Gloucester.
Her last proper job was that of Facilities Manager for the Library Service in North Yorkshire, where she gained enormous experience of everything going wrong at once.
She left to run a hotel in Turkey where she then gained enormous experience of everything going wrong at once, but in a foreign language.
Her early attempts at writing were not well received. Apparently cannibalism is not a suitable subject for a school poetry competition.
All attempts to stop writing have failed. Jodi Taylor is the author of the phenomenally successful Chronicles of St Marys – the story of a group of tea-sodden historians, and the Frogmorton Farm series – the heart warming and frequently hilarious story of a ramshackle farmhouse and its erratic owner.
She currently lives in Gloucestershire.
The Chronicles of St Mary’s
‘A carnival ride through laughter and tears’
Publisher’s Weekly
Feisty independent publishing
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